


Past Sunset

by HeavenlyDisaster



Series: Across the Sunset Sea [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Gendrya - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Don't worry, Even if it's a lie, F/M, I CAN FIX THIS, I just don't want anyone getting upset because I don't tag something they think I should, Plot driving angst, Some tags may be fake news, Terrible angst, spoilers in the tags, whoopsie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-30 00:57:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19031476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeavenlyDisaster/pseuds/HeavenlyDisaster
Summary: Arya meets some west of Westeros locals and they have a bang up time.  Something unfortunate happens, but it's all for the plot.





	Past Sunset

**Author's Note:**

> I debated adding chapters to No Walls, but I decided to just make it the first part of this new series instead.

Arya broke the surface gasping for air.  She looked around, treading water.  _Nymeria_ was nothing but a bunch of loose chunks of wood and debris floating on the waves.  She spit seawater from her mouth.  The people of the land had disappeared into the trees as silently as they’d come.

She could see survivors from _Nymeria_ swimming for shore as quickly as they could.  Some were clinging to driftwood or floating luggage and paddling to shore desperate to keep out of the water.  Something brushed against Arya’s leg and true fear snared her breathing.

She didn’t want to look.  She was convinced nothing good was down there.  Someone splashed up out of the water a few feet away.  Arya saw it was Patrek dragging someone behind him toward the shore, but all of Arya’s focus was on the monster.  Arya sucked it up and looked down.

The water was clear enough that she could see remains of past ships beneath her.  Even the rowboat that she had been in only minutes before had barely sunk to the bottom yet.  She saw Gendry’s Warhammer still in the boat and her stomach sank.  _Gendry_.  _Where’s Gendry_?

Arya searched the water for any trace of the monster before diving down toward the boat.  She grabbed Gendry’s Warhammer with both hands.  It was heavy.  She felt like she was fighting an anchor as she struggled to bring it to the surface.  Movement rippled through the water before she could get back to the surface.

Arya turned in time to see the horrible fanged mouth of the serpentine monster swimming for her.  She couldn’t outswim it.  Especially not weighed down with Gendry’s Warhammer.  She struggled backwards as it grew closer before bringing the hammer up to smash the monster in its horrible jaws.

It seemed shocked to have been hit.  It spun away from her and back towards the ruins of _Nymeria_.  Arya swam up to the surface and gulped air back into her lungs.  She saw Moryn and at least twenty of her men struggling for the shore.

“It’s coming back!” She shouted as best she could with the salt water strangling her voice.

Some of the men panicked and began to swim faster, thrashing in the water.  Others went completely still as they searched for any sign of the beast.  Arya made her way to shore swallowing more than her share of sea water as she went.  By the time she touched land, she was out of breath and ever muscle in her body screamed at her with the slightest movement.

“C’mon, Lord Baratheon.  You weren’t down that long.” She heard Patrek saying.  She turned her head toward him.  The sand ground against her flesh. 

Patrek was crouched over Gendry pumping his chest with both hands.  He wasn’t moving.  Arya scrambled to her feet and made her way over to him.  She shoved Patrek out of the way and set her hands on Gendry’s chest just like Theon Greyjoy had showed her and her siblings a decade before when he was teaching them to swim.

She pinched Gendry’s nose and tilted his head forcing air into his lungs.  She stopped and pumped his chest again before breathing into his mouth again.  Arya was forcing herself to stay calm.  _Calm as still water_.  She told herself though Syrio’s words weren’t helping.  _Come on, Gendry.  Come_ on!

At last, Gendry coughed and spit up a mouthful of seawater.  He turned his head and coughed up more before wheezing in a breath of air.  He flopped back onto his back and gasped.  His eyes blinked open at last and he looked over at Arya.

Moryn and the others reached the shore equally distressed.  Gendry sat up and looked back at the Sunset Sea.  The smooth scaled monster arched out of the water again and screamed.  Arya could see blood on the side of its head where she’d struck it with Gendry’s hammer.  She looked back at Gendry.

Gendry gave her a wry smile drooping at the corners from exhaustion.  “So… is this the fun or the lightning?”

“Why?  Are you saying you’re not having fun?”  She laughed and pressed her lips to his firmly.  Gendry’s hand moved up to cup the back of her head.  She pressed her forehead against his and took a steadying breath.  They were alive.  Everything was alright as long as they were both alive.

Arya sat back on her butt and stared at the floating remains of her once great ship.  The masts were toppled.  The sails floated on the water.  Her dire wolf bow was somewhere beneath the waves already.  Everything she had brought with her was destroyed except what she kept on her.

“What the fuck was that?” Moryn cried, tramping over to her.  “It looked like a giant snake.  What the fuck is a giant snake doing in the water?”  He demanded as if she would know.

“Bet those people would know.  The ones that were standing in the trees before it attacked.”  Patrek suggested.

Gendry coughed again and tipped his head back in the sand to look at the tree line.  “They know alright.  But I don’t think they’ll be telling us anything.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Moryn demanded.  “They watched our ship get sunk by that beast.  Why wouldn’t they give us answers?”

“Why would they?”  Arya asked.  “We’re strangers to them.  Invaders.  Did you see all the ships that have been sunk here?  I’d bet there are more ships along the shoreline here than there are below Shipbreaker Bay.”

Moryn sat down heavily beside them.  The other sailors lay in various stages on exhaustion.  Some were passed out in the sand.  Either that or they were dead.  Arya couldn’t check just then.  The sun was getting lower.  It’d be dark soon and they had no idea where they were or any way to leave.

“What do we do now, Cap’n?” Someone asked.

Arya looked at the trees and frowned.  If the people had stayed she might have tried to communicate with them.  Maybe convince them to take them to the castle or someplace else to stay and eat.  But they had left and clearly wanted nothing to do with them.  They had seen the sails on _Nymeria_.  There was no way they hadn’t.  And it had evidently meant nothing to them.

“Set up camp on the beach for tonight.  We can figure something else out tomorrow once we’ve had a chance to rest.”  Arya instructed.  “We’ll keep watch in shifts.  The men can sleep first once they’ve started a fire.  Somebody should figure out what was salvaged from the ship.  See if there’s any food left.  I think I saw one of the trees washed up down the beach.  Send somebody to check it out and bring it back if it is.”

Moryn nodded obediently and went off to give instructions.  Gendry sat up then and looked over at Patrek.  He was still staring out at the ocean.  Now that Gendry was alive and safe on shore, he had gone completely blank.  Gendry touched the man’s shoulder.  Patrek looked over at him.

“Thanks for going down after me.  You might’ve just left me for fish food to save yourself.”  Gendry told him.

Patrek nodded numbly.  Arya knew that look.  She’d worn it herself so many times.  If she weren’t so accustomed to horrible things happening, she might have worn it then.  Instead, her mind was on what she should do next.  How she was going to take care of her men.  Most of them were sailors not fighters.  And even the fighters had lost many of their weapons in the sea.

Men were carrying washed up debris and supplies up the beach.  Arya spotted two men carrying the trunk from her cabin up the beach.  Arya scrambled to her feet and hurried down the beach after them.  They dropped the trunk at her feet and stepped back.  Arya worked at the clasps quickly and pulled the top up.

Her clothes were drenched in sea water, but they could be worse.  She’d have to see to them all being hung out to dry.  She dug through them to the bottom until her fingers found the smooth wooden shaft of her spear.  She pulled out the two halves and sighed in relief.  She had given it up as a lost cause when she saw the ship break in half.

“Thought that was still in the North.” Gendry said behind her. 

She scowled at the spear.  Embarrassed at having been caught.  She fixed the two halves together and spun the spear around from shoulder to shoulder.  Gendry watched her with heavy lidded eyes.

“Well, you worked hard on it.”

Gendry grinned at her.  They were both filthy from seawater, nearly drowning, and being covered in sand.  Still, Arya couldn’t help but feel an unwavering attraction to him.  She arched her brow at him and nodded down the beach.

“Saved your hammer for you.” She told him.

Gendry looked over his shoulder to where two sailors were arguing over his hammer.  Gendry glared at the men and stomped over to snatch it away.  The men dropped the hammer and threw their hands up in surrender as they backed away.  He slung the hammer over his shoulder and through the strap on his back before returning to Arya.

“Captain,” Moryn said at her side.  Arya tipped her head toward him to indicate she was listening.  “Of the eighty-seven men we left Oldtown with, forty-two of us remain.  We have found three of the trees.  The apples and the peach.  No word on the orange trees, yet.  None of the fruits were still on the trees, however.

“Men have been bringing in salvage as it washes ashore.  I have instructed the men to keep their distance from the water though I feel that may be self-evident.  We have three fires to split between the survivors.  There is no final word on the food supplies aside from the empty trees.”

Arya nodded and looked between the fires.  She thought one might be too close to the trees, but there was nothing for it now that it was lit.  Gendry came back and stood near her, staring out at the sea as Moryn continued his report.

“Alright.  Split the watch at each of the fires.  We’ll have three up at a time for each shift.  Two on the trees, one on the sea.  We don’t know what that monster is capable of.”

The last thing they needed was for the beast to slither ashore and feast on them while they slept.  Arya made her way to the middle fire.  Gendry was close behind her, but when they reached the fire he went to sit beside Patrek instead.  Two of her sailors brought her trunk to her.  She sat in front of it and leaned her back on it.  She was exhausted, but she knew she would not sleep.

Arya split her time between the sea and the tree line.  They were surrounded by danger with no real way to protect themselves.  They were outnumbered and outmatched if any of their adversaries decided to attack.  She didn’t know how to protect her pack in these foreign lands.  They weren’t White Walkers that would go down by taking out the leader.  Not to mention, she did not know their fighting style.  She didn’t know anything about them save the fact that they lived on a land west of Westeros where a castle flew Stark banners.

“-didn’t think it’d be worse.  Nothing could be worse than the dead coming to life.  Not until I saw that thing.  Bigger than that Targaryen’s dragon.  Mouth the size of the boat.  We all should be dead.  It’s a wonder we’re not.” Patrek was saying.  His voice was devoid of all emotion.

“I’m more concerned about the people here.  At least the sea beast can’t reach us on shore.  Those people can.  And there’s more of them than there are of us.  Even before we lost half of us to that monster.” Gendry reasoned.

Patrek shook his head.  “The Greyjoy’s kraken is a myth pure and simple.  If they knew about this thing, they’d change their sigil.”

A howl sounded in the woods behind them.  Arya turned and squinted into the trees.  She couldn’t see anything.  The beach had gone silent save the waves breaking on the shore.  Two more howls answered the first.

“Wolves?” She heard a man cry.  “There’s _wolves_ here?”

“There’s a giant snake monster in the sea what wrecks ships and you’re surprised about the wolves?” Another man answered.

Arya wouldn’t admit it, but she found the presence of wolves comforting.  They weren’t her wolves she knew.  Nymeria still roamed the Riverlands as wild as any dire wolf.  Her pack grew larger by the day with no humans around to stop them.  Of course, now that the wars were over, they would be more at risk.  Hunters and farmers alike would attempt to kill them or drive them off.  It was only a matter of time before one of them was successful.

Arya looked over as Gendry came to sit beside her.  Patrek was asleep on the other side of the fire near some of the other sailors.  He didn’t say anything, but he did set his hand on hers in the cold sand.  The only show of affection either of them would permit in sight of company.  Aside from the relieved kisses they’d given each other when he’d come back to life earlier.

“I’m going to start for the castle at first light.” She told him.

Gendry nodded and looked off in the direction of the castle though it could not be seen from the beach.  The trees were thick around them.  A tangle of vines and bushes filled in any space between the massive trunks.  There were no obvious paths.  No sign that humans had walked through the forest at all though they had seen them all plain as day.

“Patrek should stay here with Moryn and the other sailors.” Gendry suggested.  He was staring at his sleeping friend with concern.  No doubt it bothered him that the man had gone out of his way to save his life.  Gendry didn’t think he was worth it, but Arya knew already that any and all of the Black Swords would have done the same.  They credited much of their survival in the North to Gendry and his smith work.

“You should stay with him.”

Gendry was shaking his head before she’d even finished her sentence.  “I’m staying with you.  Wherever you go.”

Arya sighed.  “It’s safer on the beach.”

“We don’t know that.”

“It can’t be any more dangerous in the forest.” Arya nodded at the trees and a wolf howled as if in response.

Behind them the water splashed and the sea monster let out a bellow before crashing back beneath the waves.  Arya leaned back against her trunk.  There didn’t seem to be any good option before her.  She looked over at Gendry.  The fire glowed on his tanned skin like it did when he worked a forge.  He may not have been thriving in Storm’s End from what she’d seen, but at least he’d been safe.  Alive. 

She shut her eyes and at once she was back in the Riverlands.  Wolves were all around her.  Two miles off, she could smell meat cooking.  Her pack filled in around her.  They smelled it, too.  She was hungry though she still tasted the blood of a rabbit she’d caught on her muzzle.  She started toward the cooking meat silently.

Two miles was nothing to the wolves.  Their territory spanned the Riverlands.  No other packs were brave enough to challenge them.  They crossed rivers and fields.  They ate what they wanted.  Most of the humans that might try to harm them had disappeared.  The only thing that had frightened the pack was when those dragons had flown overhead.  But they hadn’t been seen in months.

A rabbit leapt away from her as she went.  The wolves let it go.  They had bigger game in mind.  She came upon a campsite.  Seven armored men sat pulling at the husk of snared and cooked rabbits.  Seven men, but forty wolves.  And most of the men had shed their armor for the night.  She heard her pack circling the camp.  Watched the horses grow restless.  The horses knew what the men did not.

Silent as shadows, the wolves stepped out of the trees for the men who never saw them coming until too late.

Arya’s eyes snapped open.  Gendry was sleeping beside her, his head leaned against the trunk at an angle that had to be painful. She nudged his shoulder.  He snuffled and sat up.  His hands tightened on the handle to his hammer in his lap.  Arya got to her feet and looked around their camp.  Something was off but she couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

Gendry stood up beside her.  _What’s wrong with this picture_?  She unsheathed Needle and moved toward the fire to their left.  It was nearly out.  The fourteen sailors huddled around it were motionless.  Too motionless. 

Her stomach churned.  They were all dead.  Some had been ripped apart so completely that Arya couldn’t tell who was who.  Others had their throats slit.  She looked back at the trees, but there was no sign of the attackers.

Arya turned back for the people at her fire nearest the woods.  Gendry had gone to the opposite fire.  She ran for him as quickly as a deer and silent as a shadow.  Gendry was knelt beside Moryn when she reached him.  She spun quickly, assessing the area and working on finding the threat.

“Giant fucking wolves.” Moryn grunted. 

Gendry pulled back Moryn’s blood soaked shirt and grimaced at the mutilated flesh.  Arya saw that they were bite marks.  Not unlike what Nymeria had done to the abominable Joffrey’s arm years before when she traveled the King’s Road with her father and sister.  She stowed Needle and bent down beside Gendry to inspect the wound.

“Burn the wound.  I’ll get a sewing needle and thread to stitch him up.” She told Gendry.  “Check for other survivors.”

She went back to her trunk, stirring her men as quietly as she could.  Patrek pulled his dragon glass axe from his belt and scanned the trees.  Arya saw the other Black Swords flank him.  Arya dug in her trunk after her sewing kit.  The sun was coming up as she ran back to Gendry and Moryn.

“Huge beasts shouldn’t be that silent, Cap’n.” Moryn told her as she set to stitching up the gashes in his stomach.

“They were dire wolves?  You’re sure?” Gendry demanded.

Moryn gnashed his teeth together as Arya tugged the thread through his skin.  “I’ve seen wolves before, M’Lord.  These were the size of horses.”

“Were there people with them?  Did you see?” Arya asked, tying off a stitch.

Moryn shook his head.  “Didn’t see people.  Just the wolves.”

“How many?”

“Three here.  Think there were more at the other fire.  Didn’t go near you, though.” Moryn hissed in a breath through clenched teeth.  “You were closest the trees.  Doesn’t make sense.  Not that I’m not glad, Cap’n.”

Arya frowned in thought as she finished the last stitch.  It was a solid question.  It bothered her not knowing the answer.  She put the needle and thread back in the kit and stood.  When she dozed off there were forty-two survivors.  In a matter of hours that number was down to just eighteen and four of them were severely wounded.

Arya examined the corpses.  Some of them were killed by dire wolves, but more than half had their throats slit.  _Why kill us_ _now?  Why not kill us when we were rowing to shore_?

“Grey Tooth, Spit, Baldon, stay with the sailors and the wounded here.  If anyone or anything steps foot on the beach that isn’t us, kill it.”

“Where are we going, Cap’n?” A Black Sword named Jerryk asked.

Arya checked her weapons on her belt and started for the tree line.  “I’ve got questions for the natives.”

* * *

 

 Arya liked it better when there were eight in her pack.  If she hadn’t fallen asleep, their dwindling numbers might have been avoided.  She had no excuse for falling asleep on watch.  Even less of one for not waking to the slaughter.  She couldn’t decide if her trek into the forest after the Westerners was in want of answers or revenge.

She told Gendry back in Storm’s End that she wasn’t in the vengeance game anymore, but that was before twenty-four of her men had been murdered overnight.  In less than twenty-four hours, sixty-nine of the men that set forth with her from Westeros were dead.  She blamed herself.

The forest was too quiet.  Too still.  She didn’t like it.  She remembered seeing smoke from several campsites when they spotted land on _Nymeria_.  From how long they had been walking and how quickly, she knew they should have reached one of the fires by now.  Arya stopped and took a slow turn around the forest.  There should have been some sign of life.  Of human activity.  Shelters.  Anything. 

“Maybe we should try for the castle?” Gendry suggested.

Arya gave him a hard look.  “And how do we get there, _My Lord?_ ”

Gendry scowled at her.  “It’s on the cliff face.  We could follow it up.”

“There were battlements around it.  If people are living there, I’m sure there are archers and guards on the lookout for strangers coming up the cliff face.  We’d be shot before we reached the walls.”

“Then let’s go back to the beach.  Figure out a way to build a new ship or something.”

Arya rolled her eyes and started forward into the trees again.  “You can’t just build a new ship.  We don’t even have half the supplies needed for something like that.  Besides, you saw what that monster did to _Nymeria_.  Do you really think another ship will make it past that thing?”

“Not to mention supplies,” Meric offered.

Arya nodded.  “Right, we don’t have food or drinking water.  It took us three months to get here from Westeros.  We’d starve before we made it halfway even _if_ the monster didn’t destroy our vessel first.”

“So where are we going?” Gendry demanded.

Arya huffed irritably.  “If I knew where we _were_ I might be able to answer that.  I’m looking for people.  Any people.  We know they’re here.  Just not where.  Now, will you _please_ shut up so I can think?”

Gendry didn’t say anything else.  The three other men were equally quiet.  At least their footsteps made noise.  She couldn’t detect the sounds of any feet on the ground, but she _was_ detecting footsteps.  Muted.  Bare feet against wood.  They followed them, but they were not behind them.

Arya stopped again and the footsteps stopped with her.  She frowned and squinted through the trees.  No even the barest of movement showed.  Not the rustling of wind on leaves or the slight shift of body weight from foot to foot.  At least, not from anyone outside her small party.

Someone grabbed her arm.  Arya snapped her head back ready to snap at Gendry when she saw the look on his face.  He had gone extremely pale.  His blue eyes were wide and focused upwards in the canopy.  Arya followed his eyes and every muscle in her body locked up.  Great wooden structures were built into the tree tops with wooden bridges linking them.  On every bridge five men stood with knocked bows watching them.

Arya couldn’t believe how stupid she was.  How had she never looked up?  She turned slowly and saw that they were completely surrounded.  Dark eyes watched them from everywhere.  Arya gritted her teeth and slowly put her hands up in surrender.  She had run away from Westeros to escape the rules of gods and men, now she prayed to those gods to protect them.  To protect her men and Gendry if not her.

Ten more men swung down from the trees on ropes and landed beside them silently.  They took the weapons from her men and bound their hands with rope.  They came to Gendry and Arya last.  One grabbed Gendry’s hammer from his back while another bound his hands.  Three came to Arya.

The largest of them grabbed her chin roughly between his fingers and titled her head, staring at her.  She glared back at him.  She felt fingers at her waist untying her belt of weapons.  The man holding her chin spoke then in a strange language she had never heard before.  Arya slapped his hand away and took a step back.  Two more of the men were behind her, grabbed her arms and tying them up.

The largest man, who Arya took for their leader, shouted an order to the men holding Gendry and the others.  They nodded and started to lead them away.  Arya lunged for Gendry and he for her.

“No!” Arya cried as the men behind her held her in place.  “No!  Stop!  You can’t take them!”

“Arya!” Gendry cried back, fighting against his captors even with his arms tied behind his back.

“No!” One of the forest men came up behind Gendry and used his hammer to crack him over the head.  “ _Gendry_!” She screamed, certain that they had just killed him.

She watched helplessly as they picked up his body and dragged him off into the trees after the others.  She fought against her captors, kicking in the backs of their knees and twisting free of their hands.  The leader grabbed her by her hair and threw her to the ground.  She flipped up onto her feet and grabbed a stick from the forest floor.  It wasn’t tempered wood like her staff or even the wooden swords she used to used to use when she practiced water dancing with Syrio, but it was enough to crack over the jaw of one of her captors.

Her hands were still bound, but she was gaining the upper hand.  An arrow whizzed by her face barely an inch from cutting her skin.  She froze and looked back up at the archers.  She debated continuing her attack.  If they’d killed Gendry, she didn’t have a whole lot more to live for.  But if he’d somehow survived, she needed to save him and the other men.  Whatever the cost.

* * *

 

 They traveled for three days in the opposite direction that they had taken Gendry and the others.  Three days during which anything could have happened to them.  They could have been dead by then.  The men on the beaches were likely gone as well.  They didn’t have enough food to last them besides.

They came to the castle gates and Arya could see that there were new banners on the inland side of the walls.  These dire wolves bore wings and were wrapped in flames.  Her shoes had been lost in the mud two days before so she stumbled through the muddy gates barefoot and sore.  If nothing else, her little rebellion seemed enough to keep the men from interacting with her any more than necessary.

It was bizarre to say the least.  She walked through the gates of the Westerner’s castle and felt as though she were walking into Winterfell.  The castle was a near to exact replica.  The yard was greener than Winterfell had ever known.  The tower nearest the coast was taller, but it was Winterfell in as near as it could be.

They brought her into the hall.  It had more windows than her home had.  The stones were a darker shade of grey.  At the head table sat nine people.  Four were young boys, the oldest of whom would have been younger than Rickon.  At the middle sat a beautiful, dark skinned woman and a dark skinned man wearing a crown.  As she came closer she saw that it was the crown of the Kings of Winter.  A Stark crown.

Her captors spoke to the king in their foreign tongue and Arya wondered if she would know she was bound for the block before it was happening.  The king stared at her with interest.  He stood out of his chair and moved toward her.

“You are from the east.” The king spoke in the common tongue and Arya could not stop her surprise.

“You speak the common tongue?”

The king nodded and picked up a lock of her hair.  She wanted nothing more than to tug her head away, but she had more questions and kings had little patience for people that were unfriendly.  He rubbed her hair between his fingers before dropping it and continuing around her.

“What is your name?” One of the boys asked.  His eyes caught over her shoulder and he withered back into his seat.

“I’m Arya Stark of Winterfell.” She answered coolly.

“Winterfell!” The boy and his brother shouted.  “It’s real?”

“Have you met the Old Gods?”

“Did you see the Others?”

“Does frozen rain _really_ fall from the sky and make the ground white?”

“Do you know the Children of the Forest?”

“ _Enough_!” The king bellowed.  The children curled into their seats and looked at their laps.

Arya stared up at the man as he stopped in front of her again.  His eyes were hard and unwavering.  He touched her cheek and Arya _did_ pull away.  Mostly on instinct.  He narrowed his eyes at her.

“I’m told you traveled with many men.  One may have even been your husband.”  He said something to one of her captors in their language and the man replied in kind.  “The one with the hammer on his back.”

Arya debated a lie and the truth.  She decided to split the difference.  “He’s my betrothed.”

“Betrothed.” The king repeated.  “Do you travel with a husband, then?”

 _So his comprehension isn’t perfect_.  “I am not married.”

The king looked her up and down again. Somehow a more scrutinizing stare than before.  It made her want to squirm.  It made her want to punch his lights out.  But her captors had taken her weapons.  All of her weapons.

“You must be tired.”  The king called out instructions in his language and servants rushed to perform whatever tasks he had given them.

The men at her sides and behind her urged her forward out of the hall.  She saw that inside the Winterfell replica was much different than her home.  The hallways were similar, but some bent too soon and some rooms were missing.  She was stopped at the end of one of the hallways and pushed into the room at the end.

The ropes around her wrists were undone and the door was shut behind her.  Arya turned around in time to hear the lock click into place.  She sighed and turned back to her new room.  A small, straw bed was shoved in a corner.  There was a small table near the window and a fireplace against the wall sharing the door, but it hadn’t been lit possible ever.

She was startled to realize that this would have been Jon’s old room at the castle in Winterfell.  It was slightly smaller, but she had spent enough time with her bastard brother to remember his room.  She frowned.  Jon wasn’t a bastard, though.  He was a Targaryen.  A _trueborn_ Targaryen.  Banished to the North.  She would never see him again.  Nor Sansa or Bran for that matter.  Her ship was wrecked.  Her men were dead.  Gendry was….

Her door opened and an army of servants came in carrying a tub and hot water to fill it with.  Arya could smell that it was seawater.  The salt stung the air more once they had filled the tub than before.  Two of the maids began to undress her.  Arya pushed at their hands.

“I can do it myself.” She told them, but she may as well have not spoken at all.  They did not understand her.  She gave up fighting them and allowed them to remove the rest of her clothing before stepping into the tub.  She winced at the scalding temperature.

They scrubbed at her with hard stones rife with holes.  Arya had never seen stones of their kind before.  She wondered what else the new land had to offer.  They scrubbed her scalp with some sort of honeyed mixture before pouring a fresh pot of boiled water over her head.  She let out a gasp and tried to stand out of the skin meltingly hot bath.  The women forced her back down.

When she was cleaned to their liking, they brought her from the bath and dried her.  They wrapped her in a soft robe and left with the tub and all the bathing accoutrements.  Arya sat down on the straw bed unsure of what to do now.  There were four armed guards outside her door that she could see when the servants left.  And she still had no weapons.

She didn’t mean to, but she fell asleep again.  When she awoke, the sun was setting.  She cursed herself for being so lazy.  She stood and went to inspect the table.  The legs were tall and thin.  She could use them as weapons as she had the two halves of her spear.  She turned to the window.  She could also shatter the glass and use a big enough shard as a knife.

Arya frowned.  None of that would be enough to tell her where Gendry and the others had been taken.  If they were even still alive.  And if she _did_ escape, where would she go?  She had no ship to sail her home.  She had no weapons to protect herself in the deep forest.  She had no map to lead her by. 

Three of the maids came back to strip her of her robe and dress her in a fine gown that might have looked great on someone like Sansa, but it was too much for her.  Thin fabric that clung to her body.  A low collar that dipped between her breasts and no sleeves.  She had already felt naked without her weapons.  Now she felt exposed.

The maids ripped a brush through her tangled hair and fixed princess braids around her head.  She gritted her teeth.  _They’re making me look like_ Sansa!  She whined to herself.  Not that she could ever _truly_ look like her sister.

The guards came to lead her back out of her room.  She saw their eyes raking over her.  She had done well to keep herself out of the leering eyes of lechers.  That was, until she’d landed in a foreign land with no way to communicate with the locals and not enough soldiers to match their forces.  _What a stupid girl I am_!

Her hands were unbound now.  She didn’t suppose they knew just how quick she could be.  She could probably take out at least one of their eyes before they pulled her away.  Arya resigned herself to being led back to the hall.  It was fuller now.  Four tables had been brought out from the walls and natives sat at them talking to each other in their foreign tongue.

They all looked up when she walked in.  She wanted nothing more than to disappear.  She might steal one of the guard’s faces and slip away.  _I still don’t know the language_ ….

“You look better.” The king told her as she approached the head table with her guards.   Arya didn’t respond.  She didn’t care if some foreign king found her appearance tolerable or not.  She wanted Gendry back.  She wanted to go home again.

“Come.  Sit down.  Eat.”  The king gestured to a seat to his left.

Arya was suddenly and painfully reminded of the feasts of her childhood.  When her father would invite a new person to eat with him each night.  She heard him telling Robb that it was good practice.  Learn who their men were and let their men learn who they are and they will fight for you better and harder than they would ever fight for a stranger.

She sat down and stared at the plate of food set before her.  She didn’t know what surprised her more; the strangeness or the similarities in the food.  It tasted different than what she was used to, but it was also very much the same.  It wasn’t fish like she expected from a coastal holdfast.  She had been given nothing but dried fish on their journey from the forest to the castle.

“You are called Anye?” The king said beside her.

“Arya.  Arya Stark.”

The king nodded.  “Arya.  How do you come to be here?”

“Your men outnumbered mine.”  Arya told him dryly.  The bread was strange.  Yellow not brown like she was used to.  She expected it to taste like lemon cakes, but it wasn’t as sweet.  It tasted good nonetheless.

“I mean to the Western Shore.  Was your ship caught in a storm that you lost direction?” The king corrected.

“No storms.  The winds were good.  I sailed west hoping to map it.” Arya explained.

“Map it.” The king repeated.  He sat back in his chair and observed her again.  Arya really wished he would stop.  Especially with the way she was dressed in next to nothing.  Though it would seem to be the typical garb for women in the castle.  The woman on the king’s right was similarly dressed though her gown was white not yellow as Arya’s was.

“Our maps stop at the Iron Islands.  Nobody who has sailed west has ever returned.”  Arya took a sip of the water in front of her.  “I suppose now I know why.”

The king nodded.  “Yes, the serpent took my grandfather’s ship when he came a thousand years ago.”

“Your grandfather?”

“Brandon Stark he was called.  He brought the wolves with him and drove away the Pantari.  The people cheered him and he declared himself their new king.  He had this castle erected and vowed he would kill the serpent and someday return to his children across the Sunset Sea.”

Arya had assumed something like that must have happened, but it still left more questions than answers.  She wondered how many attempts had been made on the serpent.  How many more people had lost their lives trying to get Brandon the Shipwright back to Westeros?  And who were the Pantari?

“Brandon was convinced that it was only a matter of time before his son set sail to find him again.  He did not want his son’s ship to go down as his had.  It was all for nothing.  The only ships that came wore sigils of squid or circles or blank sails.  All wrecked with the rest.  And never was a dire wolf seen on a sail again.  That is, until your ship was spotted four days past.  Dire wolves matching the seaward banners.”

“Brandon the Shipwright’s son burned the Northern Fleet when his father vanished.  He went near mad with grief for his father.” Arya explained.

The king scoffed.  “A cowardly son then.  The two children born to him by Queen Inessa were stronger.” He declared proudly.

“People take to grief differently.”

The king grunted in response.  “You are young yet.  How many years do you have?”

Arya noted that whatever their native language was called, their sentence structure must have closely resembled that of High Valyrian and Braavosi. 

“I’m eight and ten.” Arya answered.  She might even be nine and ten or a month from it at most.

“Cayn is two and ten.” The king said, pointing across the hall to where the boys from earlier sat laughing with each other. 

“Your son?” Arya clarified. 

“I had a son before him.  He would have been one and twenty now.”  The woman beside him shrank in on herself and the king put a calming hand on her forearm.

“What happened to him?”

The king cleared his throat and nodded his head toward the sea.  “He had a mind to meet the new King of Winter some years ago.  He built a ship and thought to sail at night when the serpent slept, but the beast never rests long.”

“Do you receive news of Westeros?” Arya asked, wondering if the new King of Winter he spoke of had been Robb.

“Ah, he said that was his purpose, but his grandmother filled the boy’s head with talk of snow and Children of the Forest and walls of ice that stand thousands of feet tall.”  The king said with loathing.  “Stories a thousand years old with no credence.  I had a mind not to teach my boys the Stark language in my own rebellion.  You are the first foreigner on my shores to speak the language in my lifetime.  My grandfather welcomed a few shipwrecks in his time.  It is why the language continues in the line of Western Kings.”

“All my shipmates speak the common tongue.” Arya told him.  “Even the ones your people killed.”

The king met her eye then.  His were darker, but the shape was there.  The familiar tilt of Stark eyes.  It was an unnerving thing to find in a stranger.  Especially one so passively hostile.

“It was interesting that the wolves did not go to your fire.” He said instead of making excuses or attempting to lie.  “Even the Shadow Wolves thought it odd.  They told me straight away, of course.”

“What are Shadow Wolves?”

The king pointed to a few of the men dressed in mottled grey clothing.  “Stark descendants that bond with their dire wolves and fight with them as one.  I believe there was another word for it in Westeros, but some of the Stark tongue has been lost to us over the years.”

“They’re wargs?”

The king shrugged at the terminology.  “My youngest has a mind to be like them though he does not show the talent.”

Arya looked at the small boy at the back table.  She hadn’t actually _seen_ any of the wolves so far.  She wondered where they kept them.  She thought it was just as odd that they hadn’t gone near her on the beach.  Especially when they were out for blood.  She had been having one of her wolf dreams that night on the beach.  She didn’t think that should have stopped the wolves from approaching her, but what if it had?

“Where are my men?” Arya asked, changing the subject.

He sniffed.  “Those on the beach are being brought here now.”

Arya swallowed hard.  “And the men that were with me in the forest?”

“Are you worried for the Betrothed?”  He asked lightly.  Arya could detect the warning underneath. 

“I worry for all those under my command.” Arya declared.  “Such is the job of a leader.”

The king gave her an odd smile.  “Then worry not.  Those that are dead are under your command no longer.”

He waved over her guards and gave them instructions.  The grabbed her arms and pulled her to her feet.  Arya barely felt it.  She let them pull her along back to her room.  Her eyes grew hot and she had never been so grateful to be locked up alone before.  She covered her face with her hands and cried.

She had killed him.  She should have turned the ship around the second she found him in her cabin.  She shouldn’t have stopped at Storm’s End in the first place.  Gendry was dead.  He was dead and it was her fault.  She dropped to her knees on the stone floor.  Her whole body trembled with sobs.

The sky was empty.  No moon or stars shone through her window.  An echo of Arya’s grief.  She no longer cared if the sun ever rose again.  Gendry was dead and with him went every shred of life she had within her.

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, guys, bad things happen for the plot, but if you feel sad right now, just know that no one is a bigger Gendrya than me and unlike the Nymeria, S.S. Gendrya will not sink!


End file.
